Will Telekom become a US company? Allegedly merger with US-T-Mobile and new headquarters in discussion | News

It has been almost thirty years since Telekom became a stock corporation: trading in the T share began in November 1996. The starting price was 28.50 DM, it is currently trading at around 27 euros. The US subsidiary T-Mobile generates significantly more sales and has a higher stock market value. Now Bloomberg reports that the company’s board of directors is apparently considering the option of merging the two companies.

The combined market values ​​of the two companies currently significantly exceed the $300 billion mark. A joint stock company merged in this way would be well ahead of the previous industry leader China Mobile Ltd., a company that is currently valued at 234 billion.

Complex ownership relationships
A merger of the two companies will most likely require the approval of political decision-makers on both sides of the Atlantic: despite the stock market listing, the Federal Republic still holds 14.1 percent of the company. The state-run Credit Union for Reconstruction (KfW) owns an additional 14.2 percent. The antitrust authorities in the United States probably also want to have a say: When Telekom wanted to sell the US subsidiary to AT&T in 2011, the competition authorities there rejected this.

End of EU sovereignty
On top of that, the transformation into an international holding company runs counter to IT sovereignty efforts, which have become more of a focus in the European Union since the beginning of Trump’s second term in office. The merger of Deutsche Telekom AG and T-Mobile US would mean that US authorities would be able to demand access to customer data via the Cloud Act, argues Markus Feilner in a commentary for Golem. It was only recently that the federal government commissioned Telekom (along with SAP) to develop a “Germany app” as a portal for administrative services.

Criticism of Telekom CEO
The CEO of Deutsche Telekom, Tim Höttges, has attracted attention with pithy words in the past. In 2023, he criticized the alleged over-regulation in the German communications market and blamed it for the fact that margins in this country were not as high as in the USA. In September 2024 he said there was too little work being done in Germany.

Globally operating group
The US subsidiary T-Mobile has been built up into one of the largest mobile phone providers there since 2001 after purchasing VoiceStream; Deutsche Telekom AG remains the majority owner. There are also subsidiaries and investments in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Great Britain, Turkey and many EU countries. In 2025, the company’s sales were a record 119 billion euros; Profits have consistently been in the double-digit billion range since 2022. The number of employees has been falling since 2020.